drift - a series of dialogues between artists at höjden studios

drift is a proposal that aims to trace artistic and discursive tendencies moving through höjden studios. It simultaneously constitutes a forum where materials and ideas can transform, resonate or fall apart in the movement of recurring meetings. drift is a record of cacophonies landing slowly over time as artists at höjden studios invite for openings and points of connection.

With: Ar Utke Ács, Austeja Vilkaityte, Foad Arbabi, Karina Sarkissova, Maia Means, Molly Engblom, Oda Brekke, Paloma Madrid, Robin Dingemans, Scott Cazan, Sonja Lindgren, Stina Ehn, Andrew Hardwidge, Fatima Kassius, Salka Ardal Rosengren, Lisa Schåman, Daniela Serafimova, Karin Roberts, Deike Ladwig and Yari Stilo.

produced by Oda Brekke and Scott Cazan
graphic form by Edith Ekström
mastering by Foad Arbabi

drift is made possible with support from Kulturrådet.
2024

Episode 9. Art and Life: Andrew Hardwidge and Fatima Kassius

Fatima is the curator behind galleri höjden and wants to connect with the neighbors.  Andrew is a dramaturg and dancer, he enjoys feeding people and grapples with what it means to be a performer who is also a parent. In the 9th episode of drift they address their prioritization of social relationships over artistic careers and question how context can become part of a performance or an exhibition. Could collectivity gain more importance when working with art and is it possible to hold space for nurturing within artistic spheres?

Fatima Kassius is an artist working with painting and installation. Her work examines memory, architecture and space and often results in site specific installations that reach outside of the art space. She has a BFA from Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm 2020. In 2021 she did her solo show Lokál at Kulturhuset Möbeln in Tierp and she also exhibited in group shows at Örebro Läns museum, Konsthall C, Konstakademien. She often works in curatorial and collective projects and has recently started galleri höjden together with Josephine Kamoun Johansson.

Andrew Hardwidge is a dance artist, dramaturg and researcher. He is curious about the entanglements of aesthetic practice, life making and political cosmologies. Recently he has been speaking with people about healing, about authorship and questions of liberation.

Episode 8. A radio show: Salka Ardal Rosengren and Lisa Schåman

Salka and Lisa met over the course of three days to spend time with each other and dance in höjden’s studio. In the eight episode of drift you are invited to become the listener of their radio show where they unpack some dance related concerns. As the show unfolds we follow them through a range of perspectives and are made aware of the many sides of what is going on. They underline unspoken rules and zoom in and out of their experience of doing and observing dance. What is actually the impact of having an audience and what is dance as a practice if it doesn't reach anyone?

Works/People mentioned:
Peter Mills

Lisa Schåman is a dancer based in Stockholm. For the past few years, she has been working with choreographers such as Oda Brekke, Peter Mills, Malin Elgán, Carima Neusser, and Ellen Söderhult. Her artistic process is shaped by somatic practices, score-dance, games and play, as well as theories and philosophies related to dance and aesthetics, and texts written by dance makers. Lisa is a member of höjden, an artist syndicate in Östberga.

Salka Ardal Rosengren jobbar med dans och performance. Hon är född och uppvuxen i Stockholm men flyttade till Bryssel där hon utbildade sig på P.A.R.T.S. (2006-2010). Salka har skapat verk tillsammans med Mikko Hyvönen (Trash Talk), Nicholas Hoffman (The Thing with a Hook) och Andrew Hardwidge (Subbodybodysub). Som dansare har hon jobbat och turnerat verk internationellt med bland andra: Ezster Salamon, Xavier Le Roy, Boris Charmatz, Daniel Linehan, Sarah Vanhee, Tino Sehgal, Gunilla Heilborn, Malin Élgan, Rosalind Goldberg, Liz Kinoshita och Salva Sanchis. Våren 2021 tog hon en master i Nya performativa praktiker på Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola. Efter sin master skapade hon Lasting Figures som har spelats på Weld, Flockfestivalen, Atalante och åker vidare på Riksteaterturné hösten 2025.

Episode 7. Collage and sound sampling as drifting states: Daniela Serafimova and Karin Roberts

How is the state of drifting a fundamental part of being in a creative process? What does it feel like and how long can it last?

Karins art and design practice meets Danielas song writing in her home on a warm summer day. They get to know each other through the proposed notion of drifting as they spend a day making both a song and a collage together. Listen to them discuss the process and their different approaches to music, language and images.

Karin Roberts is a graphic designer and collage artist, working part time as a project manager for Nordberg Movement. She is also a co-founder of ARTmovement, an organisation that creates artistic meet-ups and co-creates art.

Daniela Serafimova is a Stockholm-based musician, writer and teacher. She produces her own music and is known for her multi-layered sound. She has collaborated with electronic DnB producers such as London Elektricity and Voltage on Hospital Records (UK). Her first single “Borderlands” was released 2020 at Cherish Label (SE), and the self produced EP “Saving Grace” was released in 2022. Currently Daniela is working on her debut album, a soft folk-jazz piano and vocal record with lyrics in Swedish.

Works mentioned:
Heather - Bill Cobham
Lars Norén - Dagböcker

Episode 6. Walking in between skills and healing: Deike Ladwig and Yari Stilo

What does it mean to listen through touch, to listen to a movement? In the sixth episode of drift dialogues clay and dance meet in a centrifugal force through push, pull and the possibility of flying off.

Yari has a background in ballet and Deike in lighting design, but both of them have discovered other worlds. Across several days and repeated walks a conversation emerges. It questions the status of art and the artist and discusses practices, tools and approaches that prioritize aesthetic exploration over disciplined performance and perfect results.

Yari Stilo received daily dance training from the age of 13 to 32. Thanks to his 84 auditions as a dancer/performer, he could empathize with, support, and bond with hundreds of dancers. From 2005, he danced in several European theater-based companies inspired by or that adapted ballet traditions. Since 2012, he has performed increasingly within experimental dance, participatory performances, choreographic installations, and performance art contexts. In 2018, he was reborn as a dancer when he started tango as an amateur and follower, the role traditionally practiced by women. Yari has been working as a personlig assistent for five years.

Deike Ladwig, born in Hamburg 1979, came to Stockholm in 2004 as an exchange student but stayed ever since. Her background lies in architecture and architectural lighting design. She has been passionately designing lighting for public spaces both out in the city space and inside public buildings for almost 20 years. Now is a time for change which led Deike to study Expressive Arts Therapy at Hälsans Hus. Thus Art and Healing is her new quest and wonder. She works with clay sculpturing and throwing in particular, which brings joy and time for connecting hands, body and soul. Watercolor paint and oil pastels is another medium for expression that she loves.

Episode 5. Listening to feelings, exploring sound: Ar Utke Ács and Foad Arbabi

Ar and Foad are both active within the queer collective fake daughter and have organised artistic programs, parties and political actions together in and beyond höjden studios since its start in 2019. In the fifth episode of drift dialogues they discuss their approaches to music and choreography with a curiosity towards explorations of listening and feeling without a set aim.

During the winter of 2024 Foad shared a practice with Ar directing focus towards the small units in music, opening a restricted frame to play with variation, texture and harmony. Ar invited Foad into a visualisation practice that explored the forms we see the world through by defining emotions as imaginary entities with texture, colour and place.

Foad Arbabi is a composer, sound designer and song writer. As a self taught producer they have over a decade of experience creating music for performing arts. Foad’s body of work is unique in tone and wide in expression, as of 2024 Foad is working on commissions and self initiated projects whilst undertaking a formal education in musical composition.

Ar Utke Ács is an artist working within contemporary dance and an expanded understanding of choreography. They work with the poetics and politics of the body in the seams of performance, dramaturgy, text, installation and the imaginary. Throughout the past years, they have created works focusing on affect landscapes and subversive poetics of positioning oneself non-verbally, including the performance echoes that was co-produced with MDT (SE) and Dansehallerne (DK). Now they are working on a series of works from the perspective of speculative characters and worlds built on lived experience of dancing with chronic illness.

Works mentioned:
Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening practice / scores
Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room

Episode 4. Secret missions, epic places: Karina Sarkissova and Molly Engblom

In the fourth episode of drift dialogues Karina and Molly discuss their practices, and their use of text as well as the role that spaces outside of the studio and institutions play in their practices of dance, curating and poetry.

They touch upon the use of montage and collage and dig into their motives for making art departing from two meetings in the studio at höjden, right in the beginning of 2024 where they exchanged practices by sharing, leaking, and finding common points of interest.

Karina Sarkissova is an independent curator and dramaturge based in Uppsala and Stockholm. She graduated in 2012 at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (SNDO) and in 2019 at Dutch Art Institute (DAI). Karina is together with Pontus Pettersson curating the annual festival My Wild Flag, as well as curating the performing arts program at Norbergfestival with Olof Runsten. Karina is a cofounder of höjden in Östberga, a space for artistic production. Karinas practice is dramaturgical, choreographic and curatorial; she is regularly working with other artists’ work and develops choreographic contexts.

molly is a dancer, choreographer and poet based in Stockholm with a BFA in Dance performance from Stockholm University of the Arts (2019). molly works experimentally with dance, voice and text to make work that takes place in different spaces; like a body of water shifts shape, the choreographic leaks in and out of stage rooms, art galleries, magazines, and unconventional places e.g. outdoors. Through strange, tender and shivering fictions she wants to create situations where relational and poetic encounters can take place. Currently she is investigating the poetics of monstrosity, abjection and desire.

Works mentioned:
And then it got legs, Jeroen Peeters
Generative Fictions, or How Dance May Teach Us Ethics, Alice Chauchat, Post dance book
Red doc, Anne Carson
Kafé mix, a series of performance evenings at höjden arranged by Jennie Bergsli, Stina Ehn, Lisen Pousette
Edith Ekström, graphic designer
INTER, by Karina Sarkissova. Commissioned work for the project Myths and realities, a lesbian oddysé

Episode 3. A four year old birch tree told me: Paloma Madrid and Robin Dingemans

October 2023 Paloma and Robin met in Vinterviken where they engaged in a shared curiosity towards the ancient wisdom of forests and gardens. In the third episode of drift dialogues you are invited to listen to their practices, unfolding through mantras and stories in a rainy afternoon.

Paloma Madrid/Mar Lobos has been working in the dance field since 2005 as a choreographer, dance educator, dancer and artist. Recognized as an active and emerging artist, she is often described in the field as the "poetical body investigator," exploring the body as a medium in constant (r)evolution and a producer of consciousness. Madrid's work consistently delves into the intersection of collaborative art and social choreography. Pioneer of Communitydance in Sweden, working with participatory embodied processes since 2008 at Botkyrka community dance and theater. Paloma is artistic director of Rosales, a dance company and platform that investigates the spaces between oppression and resistance to gather knowledge and establish a practical and theoretical framework through participatory methods, moving away from polarized dance practices. Her collaborations include commissioned work for Riksteatern, Moderna Museet, Dramaten, The Swedish Television, SKH. Engaged in the longlife process with the collective Tvillingskapet and V.C.V.T. Paloma holds a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography and a Bachelor of Arts in Dance Pedagogy from DOCH-SKH Stockholm University of Arts, Sweden.

Robin Dingemans is a choreographer, performer & teacher from Aotearoa, a Pākehā based in Europe since 1999. Robin's work includes dance for the stage, non-traditional performance spaces, video, social dances, work for children, symposiums, and writing. He often collaborates with a broad spectrum of artists, including dancers, dramaturges, composers, writers, illustrators, video designers, psychologists, and more. His practice is centered around playing with creative processes and outputs which are often sociologically informed. Since 2015 explicitly committed to anti-racist/bigoted imperatives informed by his tricultural childhood, life in hyper diverse London and racism in Sweden and internationally. His works have been commissioned and presented by many different organisations in the UK, Sweden and internationally. He has interpreted and collaborated with a broad spectrum of contemporary dance choreographers and theatre directors since 1996, performing in works of Weld Company, Fevered Sleep, Station House Opera, DV8 Physical Theatre, Wally Cardona, Lito Walkey, Requardt & Rosenberg, Ricochet, Protein, Theatre Rites, Yvon Bonenfant, les gens d'Uterpan and many more. He has created works, supervised, taught improvisation, composition and creative practices at many Conservatoires, Universities and a broad spectrum of professional and community contexts internationally.

Works mentioned:
Gloria E Anzaldua- Light in the dark, zapatistas movement

Photo: Javier Lopez

Episode 2. How does it shape the way we dwell? Sonja Lindgren and Oda Brekke

The second episode of drift dialogues starts in the middle of a practice. Sonja comes from architecture and Oda from dance, they discover they share many interests, but use different words. In this conversation they complicate each other's means of making sense of life, work and art in a society where consumption controls the way we see things. How can ideas and methods alter our perception? What are the limits of the formats we use when we work and how do they form the potential for thinking and memorizing?

During November 2023 they met several times over a pile of papers and books in höjdens studio. Listen to them read, describe and discuss their own work as well as texts and performances by other artists and thinkers.

Sonja Lindgren is an architect based in Stockholm, and works in the fields of architecture, design and scenography. She is educated at Umeå School of Architecture.

Oda Brekke is a dance artist based in Stockholm, working internationally as a choreographer, writer and performer. Her choreographic work has been presented at MDT, Weld and Fylkingen in Stockholm, Bergen Kjøtt and Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art and includes ‘When there’s only surface left’ (2021), ‘Cut: a choreo-essay’(2023) and ‘dead dead document’ (2024). Since 2018 she has organised a range of discursive formats and structures for collective spaces and processes.

Works mentioned:
Object Making- Manon Santkin
From the publication Art as Practice| Art as object
Cut: a choreo-essay- Oda Brekke Performed at 14.01.2023 Kafé Mix, höjden studios
The Construction of the Image of Swedish Domestic Architecture through Marginalia- Sonja Lindgren
The Breast piece- Alice Chauchat & Frédéric Gies
Translating the Essay into Film and Installation- Nora M. Alter
Michael Taussig- Fieldwork Notebooks
Sarah Vanhee- Oblivion
Wonderment Domastication, Gabriel A Maher

Episode 1. Words with many textures: Maia Means and Stina Ehn

In the first episode of drift dialogues you hear a non-linear reading of a book Maia and Stina made together when they met in the studio at höjden November 2023. The reading is followed by a discussion some months later where they look back at the activities that led to and landed in the book.

Amongst other things Maia invited Stina to join her in scores of listening, talking, writing and moving, adapted from her recent piece ‘fictions, stitched’ with Copenhagen based choreographer Max Wallmeier that was presented at Weld in Stockholm November 2023. Stina shared movement and writing practices, and proposed a performance score that took place around the whole house, adapted from her ongoing process with the Zürich based artist Sophie Germanier.

Stina Ehn (SE) works with dance and choreography based in Stockholm. Her work departs from experimental methods where steps and language inform one another and she often works in close collaboration with other artists. Her choreographic work has been presented at places such as Dance Nucleus Singapore, Weld Stockholm, HAUT in Copenhagen and Köttinspektionen in Uppsala. Stina has been a member of höjden studios since 2020 and part of organizing the performance event Kafé Mix since 2022.

Maia Means (NO/DK) is a Stockholm-based freelance dancer who spends time between performance, text and organisational practices. The last years she has worked with choreographers such as Oda Brekke, Sindri Runudde, Björn Säfsten, Ellard/Lech and Mette Ingvartsen. Together with Max Wallmeier, she has created two books and the performance “fictions, stitched” that premiered in 2023. Means is part of running “höjden”, a self-organised space for artists in Stockholm.